It’s only been 50 years since the founding of Namco and no more than 30 since the oldest game on the compilation under scrutiny was released, yet the word museum still sounds slightly odd. Then again, I do sound both old and odd. And continuously fail to come up with meaningful intro paragraphs. Anyway. On with reviewing stuff on shiny disks for the PC.

Namco’s 50th Anniversary Museum is a decent (thankfully budget priced too) collection of some classic, some not so classic and a few pointless games hoping to please retro gamers, teach new gamers old tricks, teach young dogs strange tricks and/or entertain the average casual gamer. There are 16 games on offer two of which (PacMania and Galaga `88) are unlockable by attaining (pretty low) highscores in PacMan, Ms. PacMan or the original Galaga, that coincidentally are actually three of the best titles available in this compilation. All three are well-emulated too and classic to the point where there is no need of any descriptions whatsoever. The other games included are:

Dragon Spirit, which I had never played before, and is a passable top down shooter with an appropriately ridiculous backstory and cute graphics .

Pole Position and the radically samey Pole Position II, both aged beyond recognition (they used to be quite nice guys back then) but excellently emulated. Still very enjoyable for the high-score maniacs out there.

Galaxian, a classic shoot-’em-up that expanded on Space Invaders. Also the first game ever to offer proper colour graphics, a theme song and a scrolling 3D-ish starfield.

Mappy, the strange little unknown game that is fun for five minutes, but tends to get nervous, act stranger and gradually reduce the poor player to a horrified excuse of a person.

Rolling Thunder, a decent platformer/shooter with nice graphics.

Xevious, the classic Namco Classic that all but defined its genre. Fly, avoid enemies, dodge bullets and destroy everything while gawking at these once groundbreaking graphics.

Skykid, which is pointless, annoying and obscure, but I guess perfectly emulating the horror of being a skykid (?).

Rally-X, a very interesting car racing game with a maze twist. An absolute time sink.

Oh sorry, almost forgot. When (and if) you buy Namco Museum you will also be able to play Dig Dug and Bosconian.

That’s the deal. Just take into consideration that there are virtually no extras (like interviews, photos, videos etc), very few options, very slight but usually annoying sound problems and the overall presentation isn’t as sleek as it should have been. And you could always go all criminal and download MAME roms for free instead. On the plus side you get to hear five “classic” 80s songs while browsing through the games and it wont cost you a fortune. The 3D arcade is a nice touch too.